I think a good realtor will help a client get a better house, and probably a better price. I spoke with the realtor who sold a house listed for 270 days on Iron Mountain Road in Poway, where the client overpaid IMO, and she didn’t even know about any of the comps or recent sales, saying, “I’m not familiar with the area”.

Another story: my realtor friend checks the tax assessor records to see the seller’s loan and purchase info that is not on the MLS. This helps to see how motivated the seller is. This info is available to the realtors, but not to the general public I think.

The HelpUSell model is working just fine. I don’t know what iPayOne did wrong…

However, I think the realtor commission system is highly inefficient. The realtor expects to make a living off the 5-10% of his time that is actually serving customers. The 95% of his time that he is marketing for new customers is completely paid for by the few clients he actually gets. If the average sale takes 20 hours, and the avg realtor has 10 sales, then he is working 200 hours per year. He has to bill at a high commission rate, because he must earn his annual salary in those 200 hours. The other 2200 hours each year are “free” work, spent marketing. For this reason, a fee-for-service is what I prefer. Let a realtor charge me hourly or by the job, just like my CPA.

Also, health insurance is not a business expense. The Target cashier doesn’t subtract health insurance from his salary, and say that “Well, I make $10K a year and after health insurance and taxes I make $0 per year, so I basically work for nothing”.